I can accept that Apple wants to make tablets require zero admin. But what concepts which are acceptable on already highly efficient, portable computers, like the MBA, would cause headaches on a smaller touchscreen device? Let me bring up again the example of downloading files to a common storage area. The difference between that and opening a file immediately in another app is essentially the difference between opening a file now or saving it for later. Does the latter procedure inherently require more admin on a touch-screen device than on a device with a trackpad and keyboard?
common storage area is equal to disk partition. means any file can be accessed by any app. security hole in general. are you familiar with sandboxing? this was original idea and it works: app have their own sandboxed file system, which is available only to application code. period.
That's the thing. Whilst the USA is moving away to apps much of the world is only now embracing the web via high tech low cost large smartphones.
I'm not sure if a low cost non web centred Apple phone can turn a tide which means that in many countries large cheap phones are now a prime device for web browsing.
Except iOS is used to browse the web much more than Android.
You still haven't said what Android can do on the web that Apple can't. Most services are agnostic.
The reason Apple isn't "winning" in emerging markets is because they don't have a low cost iPhone and haven't focused on gaining that market. It's debatable whether there's enough money to be made, even.
And he might have been wrong. In fact given that Apple has long been about 'the total system' it is likely that he was.
But he was blinded by something and never tried the switch. Which is why the fresh eyes of Cook are a very good thing. He was able to say 'you know if we are selling it as a total system we should create it that way and have our teams working together' and to see that someone like Forstall, who allegedly only played nice with Steve, just wasn't going to fit in this new idea.
Well I think it's only fair to give Ive more than 6-8 months to prove he can do more than hardware design. iOS 7hasn't even shipped yet and people are already calling for him to be demoted. Ridiculous. Lets see how polished this new version of iOS is in a year or two. But one thing is for sure, we're getting features from Federighi and Ive that we never got with Jobs and Forstall. And now Federighi and Ive get to be tagged as the ones copying other OS's for giving us features we probably should have had in iOS 5.
Even if you are a huge Apple fan (like I am) think for a moment about how much it would suck if there was no competing Android platform. Competition is a good thing no matter how you look at it (unless you are a monopoly). I think that if I were not an iOS developer that I would prefer Android for its hacking potential and app anarchy. If there is something to take away from this article it is that Apple has a very profitable mobile platform while Google and the rest of the Android world have a very low margin, highly fragmented market.
It is impressive to walk into the supermarket and see a fully functional pre-paid Android phone for less than $100. If you just want a decent MP3 player and the ability to load apps, that's a pretty nice device even if you never use it as a phone. I don't see Apple ever competing in that market. That is the kind of thing that competition brings. The vast majority of the world's population will never be able to afford an iPhone (not even a "low cost" iPhone).
It seems slightly ironic that the US is consuming media increasingly via apps when the iPhone was originally billed as a platform for HTML5 web apps (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vq993Td6ys)
Apple throttles web apps. Apple were never the ones promoting HTML 5 apps. They know full well you cannot monopolise them so why support them?
The reason Apple isn't "winning" in emerging markets is because they don't have a low cost iPhone and haven't focused on gaining that market. It's debatable whether there's enough money to be made, even.
I think that the definition of "enough money" is relative.
Apple went into the phone market only expecting to get a relatively small percentage, and yet that was "enough money" for them at the time.
Now when we're talking about markets with billions of potential buyers, even a smaller profit per device can become "enough"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogifan
Well I think it's only fair to give Ive more than 6-8 months to prove he can do more than hardware design. iOS 7hasn't even shipped yet and people are already calling for him to be demoted. Ridiculous. Lets see how polished this new version of iOS is in a year or two.
I dunno. At this stage of iPhone existence, customers shouldn't have to use an unpolished version for a year or two while a new UI designer gains experience. The smartest thing to do would be to wait to deploy it until it's more polished. Apple already got one black eye with their maps going out a bit too soon. That should be a wakeup call to not rush something out.
Quote:
But one thing is for sure, we're getting features from Federighi and Ive that we never got with Jobs and Forstall. And now Federighi and Ive get to be tagged as the ones copying other OS's for giving us features we probably should have had in iOS 5.
Good point. It is nice to see things put in that people have asked for (and jailbroken to get) for years now.
As for "copying", most consumers don't care one whit about who came first, so I don't think F and I worry about it either.
Let's see what great apps Android users are missing out on
Top Paid Apps
1. WhatsApp Msgr
2. Minecraft
3. Where's My Mickey?
4. Heads Up!
5. SponggeBob Moves In
6. Contra:Evolution
7. Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage
8. Facetune
9. AfterLight
10. Kick the Buddy: No Mercy
Top Free Apps
1. Despicable Me: Minions Rush
2. Sprinkle: Water splashing game
3. Candy Crush Saga
4. Nick
5.Google Maps (who would've thunk?)
6. Escape If You Can
7. Secret Passages: Hidden Objects
8. Battery Saver (wait, what? really?)
9. Vine
10. Can You Escape
Top Grossing Apps
1. Candy Crush Saga
2. Clash of Clans
3. Pandora
4. Modern War
5. MARVEL War of Heroes
6. The Simpsons: Tapped Out
7. Hay Day
8. Kingdoms Of Camelot
9. Minecraft
10. DoubleDown Casino
Looks like the vast majority of people use their iPhones as a glorified hand held gaming device. It really doesn't look like Androiders are missing much.
Trivial or not, most (maybe all?) of those are available in Google Play.
Platform wars are only for OS marketers and ardent fans; most serious devs (and nearly all of the profitable ones) don't choose, they simply deploy to both.
Even if you are a huge Apple fan... ...think for a moment about how much it would suck if there was no competing Android platform.
The world would be a better place and worthless idiots wouldn't be making money off of theft.
Competition is a good thing
So maybe if we actually had some competition, we'd have a better thing, huh.
I think that if I were not an iOS developer that I would prefer Android for its hacking potential and app anarchy.
You'd prefer having your app stolen 95% of the time, would you?
I don't see Apple ever competing in that market. That is the kind of thing that competition brings. The vast majority of the world's population will never be able to afford an iPhone (not even a "low cost" iPhone).
Agreed, and Apple should never try to sell to them.
I got halfway through and realised it was simply all 'internalised promotion material'. It completely forgets Apple's problem is the web and the fact that while Google makes up a major part of the web Apple has fat too low a presence here. I'd suggest Google needed Android for the web so Android works because it is such a major part of the web. IOS now has a major world problem, that being that world sales are emulating the history of Blackberry and Symbian. Apple's low web presence might in fact make it it a long slow process to recovery.
What world problem?
For example: if we look at the rise in web usage of the iPhone 5 to every single 1080p based screen phone (HTC One, GS4, LG Optimus G, Sony...) the web usage uptake from general availability looks like:
Now, this is just the single model iPhone 5 against many top-end flag ship model phones from several manufactures. So I ask, "What web problem does Apple have?" The OS with a web problem is Android. People do not seem to use Android as much for accessing the web and/or running applications. If we look at data world wide, iOS rules the web when compared to Android:
Take a look a the Mobile OS Trend and ask what Web Problem Apple has with iOS. If Android has been outselling iOS by 3:1 for the past year as the Android fans claim, why is Android's web presence so lacking?
common storage area is equal to disk partition. means any file can be accessed by any app. security hole in general. are you familiar with sandboxing? this was original idea and it works: app have their own sandboxed file system, which is available only to application code. period.
If the filesystem is properly implemented, any file can only be accessed by an app which has permission to read that file. A downloads folder need not be world-readable and world-writable. There are already many third-party filesystem apps which implement a sandboxed general storage area, but the user has to manually sync the files with other apps. If Apple were to bake a files app into iOS and provide APIs for other apps to sync with it, that might kill some of the more awkward workflows (such as attaching files to an email reply) without necessarily introducing security holes.
Did they mention the web throttling? Has it become dated news yet? The last I knew was that Apple iOS devices run web applications two-and-a-half times more slowly compared to Safari.
Did they mention the web throttling? Has it become dated news yet? The last I knew was that Apple iOS devices run web applications two-and-a-half times more slowly compared to Safari.
Your information is amazingly dated and has been wrong for some time.
What a load of rambling BS, crapolla. Writers should have to get a license to write, revoke this writers. There went 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Apple isn't doomed, far from it. They are the solid rock that can't be broken.
What a load of rambling BS, crapolla. Writers should have to get a license to write, revoke this writers. There went 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Apple isn't doomed, far from it. They are the solid rock that can't be broken.
Considering the point of the article was that Apple is NOT doomed, did you actually read it?
Android is a great phone OS. I was an iPhone user for years, but I jumped to the Android side of things because I'm a cheapskate (saved over 2k over 2 years switching to Android on Virgin Mobile). I can do everything on my Android phone I could do on my iPhone. In some ways its more capable. I like being able to download stuff from the internet, for example. It's nice having a small file system on my phone that you can actually access. I like the way Google Voice integrates into the phone (Someone stalking you? Block their calls. Permanently.) I prefer Google services over Apple services, and mobile is a lot about the service back-bone rather than the actual device or OS. I think it's absolutely crazy that Apple is trying to do all this stuff (map service, cloud service etc etc) on their own. It leaves their customers with less choice, and it means that Apple has to devote significant resources to maintaining aspects of their operations which are not profit centers (how exactly are they going to monetize their map service?)
Apple makes fantastic hardware (though the glass on the back of the iPhone 4 and 5 is plain stupid) and their OS is solid (though I hate the games they play with developers and the app store) so it's a nice solution for a lot of people.
On the other hand, Android, while less reliable and more "tweaky", gets the job done as well, and is actually a better choice for people that want maximum flexibility, the best access to Google services, and are maybe even a little cheap. Plus, Widgets!
Thanks. This is a great example of what you're supposed to do: if you like Android, buy it and be happy. Tell us what you like and don't like; opinions are welcome. When people start down the road of arguing that Apple (or its apologists) are wrong for not liking what they like, or wrong for not agreeing with the way they look at tech, then nothing is gained. The forum spirals into personal arguments. You kept an open mind about what other people like, and that's so rare on these forums!
Quote:
Originally Posted by d4NjvRzf
Would someone be willing to explain the essential difference between a tablet and a notebook? I see this distinction made a lot but have never really understood its justification. With the except of form factor, the distinction seems like an artificial barrier rooted in culture rather than technical merit. To me, smartphones and tablets are highly portable computers with touch interfaces. They run general purpose operating systems, albeit optimized for touch and low-memory/low-power environments. Why, then, are concepts familiar from Macs (such as downloading files to a common storage area) to be feared on tablets? Do touch interfaces make downloading files more dangerous? Why is it more secure if you associate a file with a program immediately rather than later?
A serious question that deserves a serious answer. Here's my take.
Apple and Microsoft take polar opposite stances on tablets. Yours is closer to Microsoft's: a tablet is another PC form factor, as Steve Ballmer said at All Things D. This has always been Microsoft's vision, going back to the tablet PC of the early 1990s. The stylus replaced the mouse, but otherwise, the tablet was a keyboard-less Windows laptop with a touch screen. With Windows 8, Microsoft simply gave its old tablet PC idea a new coat of (Metro) paint and added the capacitive touch screen.
Apple takes a more radical approach. Even before iOS, I remember Steve Jobs saying to Walt Mossberg that eventually, the file system (Finder) would be something that only "pros" would use, and that Spotlight would be how Mac users would someday launch apps, find files, etc. Spotlight is effectively "google search for your local system hard drive" and more or less eliminates location as something users have to know (or care) about. So iOS took that idea one step further: if you don't need to know where a file is to access it, you don't need Finder (file browser). You cannot open files outside of an app, iOS adopted an app-centric user interface: you browse your files within the app. And for most people who use iOS devices, that's sufficient, and the upside is that operating system functions such as "choosing programs to associate with file (types)" don't intrude on their user experience. They just see apps and content ("my picture", "my video", "my songs"), never the file system beneath it. If you saw the Mavericks demo, and you recall the new Category and Tagging features of the file system, you'll see that this eventually will obviate the need to use folders to organize your files because you can more easily sift and sort files by category and/or tag.
As for your question about the difference between a tablet and notebook, this file management example is just one expression of a broader philosophical difference between Apple and Microsoft on tablets. Apple's uses the term "post-PC" to describe computing devices that aren't the classic "personal computer" as we knew it over the last 30 years. Things like iPhones, iPods, iPads, and AppleTV are examples of this. They are purposeful information processing devices. Apple TV, for example, lets me rent and watch HD movies and TV shows over the Internet (iTunes), right on my TV. iPad lets me run apps, surf the web, read email, read magazines, play games, message and FaceTime friends. A lot of those things were previously only possible with a personal computer. Why not just make personal computers? Because the post-PC devices are simplified, curated, ultra-portable, and maintenance free. When people who have never used any kind of computer pick up and just start using iPads, that's Apple's post-PC vision paying off.
Microsoft's is not interested in replacing the PC with a post-PC device (you could argue that Surface RT is just like the iPad, but it's not bold enough at shedding its PC-era design cruft, such as the classic desktop, and ends up being a half-hearted attempt at a post-PC tablet) The odd thing is that Microsoft groks the post-PC idea, and they in fact sell a post-PC device: the Xbox. It's based on a PC, but Microsoft won't, for example, allow it to operate outside of the walled garden of (signed) Xbox games and Xbox Live content. You can't side load any app or game not approved by Microsoft, and you can't even surf the web, or use a mouse and keyboard. It's deliberately limited in purpose. It's not a PC.
Since you already stated your preference for having a general purpose operating system on a tablet, Microsoft has your needs covered.
Even if you are a huge Apple fan (like I am) think for a moment about how much it would suck if there was no competing Android platform. Competition is a good thing no matter how you look at it (unless you are a monopoly). I think that if I were not an iOS developer that I would prefer Android for its hacking potential and app anarchy. If there is something to take away from this article it is that Apple has a very profitable mobile platform while Google and the rest of the Android world have a very low margin, highly fragmented market.
It is impressive to walk into the supermarket and see a fully functional pre-paid Android phone for less than $100. If you just want a decent MP3 player and the ability to load apps, that's a pretty nice device even if you never use it as a phone. I don't see Apple ever competing in that market. That is the kind of thing that competition brings. The vast majority of the world's population will never be able to afford an iPhone (not even a "low cost" iPhone).
I don't think about competition in terms of good or bad. I don't wish it away. Competition is an inevitable outcome of any free market with relatively low barriers to entry. Copying is inevitable. While I don't condone copying, it is inevitable, and companies should defend their IP lest their competitors walk all over them with impunity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by d4NjvRzf
It seems slightly ironic that the US is consuming media increasingly via apps when the iPhone was originally billed as a platform for HTML5 web apps (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vq993Td6ys)
Yes. As far as I can tell, the App Store and its popularity took Apple and Steve Jobs by surprise. But then Steve was also wrong about not wanting to make iPods and iTunes compatible with Windows.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by d4NjvRzf
I can accept that Apple wants to make tablets require zero admin. But what concepts which are acceptable on already highly efficient, portable computers, like the MBA, would cause headaches on a smaller touchscreen device? Let me bring up again the example of downloading files to a common storage area. The difference between that and opening a file immediately in another app is essentially the difference between opening a file now or saving it for later. Does the latter procedure inherently require more admin on a touch-screen device than on a device with a trackpad and keyboard?
common storage area is equal to disk partition. means any file can be accessed by any app. security hole in general. are you familiar with sandboxing? this was original idea and it works: app have their own sandboxed file system, which is available only to application code. period.
Except iOS is used to browse the web much more than Android.
You still haven't said what Android can do on the web that Apple can't. Most services are agnostic.
The reason Apple isn't "winning" in emerging markets is because they don't have a low cost iPhone and haven't focused on gaining that market. It's debatable whether there's enough money to be made, even.
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlituna
And he might have been wrong. In fact given that Apple has long been about 'the total system' it is likely that he was.
But he was blinded by something and never tried the switch. Which is why the fresh eyes of Cook are a very good thing. He was able to say 'you know if we are selling it as a total system we should create it that way and have our teams working together' and to see that someone like Forstall, who allegedly only played nice with Steve, just wasn't going to fit in this new idea.
Well I think it's only fair to give Ive more than 6-8 months to prove he can do more than hardware design. iOS 7hasn't even shipped yet and people are already calling for him to be demoted. Ridiculous. Lets see how polished this new version of iOS is in a year or two. But one thing is for sure, we're getting features from Federighi and Ive that we never got with Jobs and Forstall. And now Federighi and Ive get to be tagged as the ones copying other OS's for giving us features we probably should have had in iOS 5.
It is impressive to walk into the supermarket and see a fully functional pre-paid Android phone for less than $100. If you just want a decent MP3 player and the ability to load apps, that's a pretty nice device even if you never use it as a phone. I don't see Apple ever competing in that market. That is the kind of thing that competition brings. The vast majority of the world's population will never be able to afford an iPhone (not even a "low cost" iPhone).
Quote:
Originally Posted by d4NjvRzf
It seems slightly ironic that the US is consuming media increasingly via apps when the iPhone was originally billed as a platform for HTML5 web apps (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vq993Td6ys)
Apple throttles web apps. Apple were never the ones promoting HTML 5 apps. They know full well you cannot monopolise them so why support them?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pendergast
The reason Apple isn't "winning" in emerging markets is because they don't have a low cost iPhone and haven't focused on gaining that market. It's debatable whether there's enough money to be made, even.
I think that the definition of "enough money" is relative.
Apple went into the phone market only expecting to get a relatively small percentage, and yet that was "enough money" for them at the time.
Now when we're talking about markets with billions of potential buyers, even a smaller profit per device can become "enough"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogifan
Well I think it's only fair to give Ive more than 6-8 months to prove he can do more than hardware design. iOS 7hasn't even shipped yet and people are already calling for him to be demoted. Ridiculous. Lets see how polished this new version of iOS is in a year or two.
I dunno. At this stage of iPhone existence, customers shouldn't have to use an unpolished version for a year or two while a new UI designer gains experience. The smartest thing to do would be to wait to deploy it until it's more polished. Apple already got one black eye with their maps going out a bit too soon. That should be a wakeup call to not rush something out.
Quote:
But one thing is for sure, we're getting features from Federighi and Ive that we never got with Jobs and Forstall. And now Federighi and Ive get to be tagged as the ones copying other OS's for giving us features we probably should have had in iOS 5.
Good point. It is nice to see things put in that people have asked for (and jailbroken to get) for years now.
As for "copying", most consumers don't care one whit about who came first, so I don't think F and I worry about it either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by See Flat
Headline is a question...
"Can Apple survive 2013?"
I will say YES!
and yes I did read the editorial but got bored and stopped.
So you did not read it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dasanman69
Let's see what great apps Android users are missing out on
Top Paid Apps
1. WhatsApp Msgr
2. Minecraft
3. Where's My Mickey?
4. Heads Up!
5. SponggeBob Moves In
6. Contra:Evolution
7. Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage
8. Facetune
9. AfterLight
10. Kick the Buddy: No Mercy
Top Free Apps
1. Despicable Me: Minions Rush
2. Sprinkle: Water splashing game
3. Candy Crush Saga
4. Nick
5.Google Maps (who would've thunk?)
6. Escape If You Can
7. Secret Passages: Hidden Objects
8. Battery Saver (wait, what? really?)
9. Vine
10. Can You Escape
Top Grossing Apps
1. Candy Crush Saga
2. Clash of Clans
3. Pandora
4. Modern War
5. MARVEL War of Heroes
6. The Simpsons: Tapped Out
7. Hay Day
8. Kingdoms Of Camelot
9. Minecraft
10. DoubleDown Casino
Looks like the vast majority of people use their iPhones as a glorified hand held gaming device. It really doesn't look like Androiders are missing much.
Trivial or not, most (maybe all?) of those are available in Google Play.
Platform wars are only for OS marketers and ardent fans; most serious devs (and nearly all of the profitable ones) don't choose, they simply deploy to both.
The world would be a better place and worthless idiots wouldn't be making money off of theft.
So maybe if we actually had some competition, we'd have a better thing, huh.
You'd prefer having your app stolen 95% of the time, would you?
Agreed, and Apple should never try to sell to them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aBeliefSystem
I got halfway through and realised it was simply all 'internalised promotion material'. It completely forgets Apple's problem is the web and the fact that while Google makes up a major part of the web Apple has fat too low a presence here. I'd suggest Google needed Android for the web so Android works because it is such a major part of the web. IOS now has a major world problem, that being that world sales are emulating the history of Blackberry and Symbian. Apple's low web presence might in fact make it it a long slow process to recovery.
What world problem?
For example: if we look at the rise in web usage of the iPhone 5 to every single 1080p based screen phone (HTC One, GS4, LG Optimus G, Sony...) the web usage uptake from general availability looks like:
Now, this is just the single model iPhone 5 against many top-end flag ship model phones from several manufactures. So I ask, "What web problem does Apple have?" The OS with a web problem is Android. People do not seem to use Android as much for accessing the web and/or running applications. If we look at data world wide, iOS rules the web when compared to Android:
http://www.netmarketshare.com/?source=NASite
Take a look a the Mobile OS Trend and ask what Web Problem Apple has with iOS. If Android has been outselling iOS by 3:1 for the past year as the Android fans claim, why is Android's web presence so lacking?
Quote:
Originally Posted by poksi
common storage area is equal to disk partition. means any file can be accessed by any app. security hole in general. are you familiar with sandboxing? this was original idea and it works: app have their own sandboxed file system, which is available only to application code. period.
If the filesystem is properly implemented, any file can only be accessed by an app which has permission to read that file. A downloads folder need not be world-readable and world-writable. There are already many third-party filesystem apps which implement a sandboxed general storage area, but the user has to manually sync the files with other apps. If Apple were to bake a files app into iOS and provide APIs for other apps to sync with it, that might kill some of the more awkward workflows (such as attaching files to an email reply) without necessarily introducing security holes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aBeliefSystem
Apple throttles web apps. Apple were never the ones promoting HTML 5 apps. They know full well you cannot monopolise them so why support them?
Apple has multiple sessions at WWDC talking about writing Web Apps. Do you even know what you are talking about? I don't think you do.
The last I knew was that Apple iOS devices run web applications two-and-a-half times more slowly compared to Safari.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aBeliefSystem
Did they mention the web throttling? Has it become dated news yet? The last I knew was that Apple iOS devices run web applications two-and-a-half times more slowly compared to Safari.
Didn't Apple fix that years ago?
Considering the point of the article was that Apple is NOT doomed, did you actually read it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by graxspoo
Android is a great phone OS. I was an iPhone user for years, but I jumped to the Android side of things because I'm a cheapskate (saved over 2k over 2 years switching to Android on Virgin Mobile). I can do everything on my Android phone I could do on my iPhone. In some ways its more capable. I like being able to download stuff from the internet, for example. It's nice having a small file system on my phone that you can actually access. I like the way Google Voice integrates into the phone (Someone stalking you? Block their calls. Permanently.) I prefer Google services over Apple services, and mobile is a lot about the service back-bone rather than the actual device or OS. I think it's absolutely crazy that Apple is trying to do all this stuff (map service, cloud service etc etc) on their own. It leaves their customers with less choice, and it means that Apple has to devote significant resources to maintaining aspects of their operations which are not profit centers (how exactly are they going to monetize their map service?)
Apple makes fantastic hardware (though the glass on the back of the iPhone 4 and 5 is plain stupid) and their OS is solid (though I hate the games they play with developers and the app store) so it's a nice solution for a lot of people.
On the other hand, Android, while less reliable and more "tweaky", gets the job done as well, and is actually a better choice for people that want maximum flexibility, the best access to Google services, and are maybe even a little cheap. Plus, Widgets!
Thanks. This is a great example of what you're supposed to do: if you like Android, buy it and be happy. Tell us what you like and don't like; opinions are welcome. When people start down the road of arguing that Apple (or its apologists) are wrong for not liking what they like, or wrong for not agreeing with the way they look at tech, then nothing is gained. The forum spirals into personal arguments. You kept an open mind about what other people like, and that's so rare on these forums!
Quote:
Originally Posted by d4NjvRzf
Would someone be willing to explain the essential difference between a tablet and a notebook? I see this distinction made a lot but have never really understood its justification. With the except of form factor, the distinction seems like an artificial barrier rooted in culture rather than technical merit. To me, smartphones and tablets are highly portable computers with touch interfaces. They run general purpose operating systems, albeit optimized for touch and low-memory/low-power environments. Why, then, are concepts familiar from Macs (such as downloading files to a common storage area) to be feared on tablets? Do touch interfaces make downloading files more dangerous? Why is it more secure if you associate a file with a program immediately rather than later?
A serious question that deserves a serious answer. Here's my take.
Apple and Microsoft take polar opposite stances on tablets. Yours is closer to Microsoft's: a tablet is another PC form factor, as Steve Ballmer said at All Things D. This has always been Microsoft's vision, going back to the tablet PC of the early 1990s. The stylus replaced the mouse, but otherwise, the tablet was a keyboard-less Windows laptop with a touch screen. With Windows 8, Microsoft simply gave its old tablet PC idea a new coat of (Metro) paint and added the capacitive touch screen.
Apple takes a more radical approach. Even before iOS, I remember Steve Jobs saying to Walt Mossberg that eventually, the file system (Finder) would be something that only "pros" would use, and that Spotlight would be how Mac users would someday launch apps, find files, etc. Spotlight is effectively "google search for your local system hard drive" and more or less eliminates location as something users have to know (or care) about. So iOS took that idea one step further: if you don't need to know where a file is to access it, you don't need Finder (file browser). You cannot open files outside of an app, iOS adopted an app-centric user interface: you browse your files within the app. And for most people who use iOS devices, that's sufficient, and the upside is that operating system functions such as "choosing programs to associate with file (types)" don't intrude on their user experience. They just see apps and content ("my picture", "my video", "my songs"), never the file system beneath it. If you saw the Mavericks demo, and you recall the new Category and Tagging features of the file system, you'll see that this eventually will obviate the need to use folders to organize your files because you can more easily sift and sort files by category and/or tag.
As for your question about the difference between a tablet and notebook, this file management example is just one expression of a broader philosophical difference between Apple and Microsoft on tablets. Apple's uses the term "post-PC" to describe computing devices that aren't the classic "personal computer" as we knew it over the last 30 years. Things like iPhones, iPods, iPads, and AppleTV are examples of this. They are purposeful information processing devices. Apple TV, for example, lets me rent and watch HD movies and TV shows over the Internet (iTunes), right on my TV. iPad lets me run apps, surf the web, read email, read magazines, play games, message and FaceTime friends. A lot of those things were previously only possible with a personal computer. Why not just make personal computers? Because the post-PC devices are simplified, curated, ultra-portable, and maintenance free. When people who have never used any kind of computer pick up and just start using iPads, that's Apple's post-PC vision paying off.
Microsoft's is not interested in replacing the PC with a post-PC device (you could argue that Surface RT is just like the iPad, but it's not bold enough at shedding its PC-era design cruft, such as the classic desktop, and ends up being a half-hearted attempt at a post-PC tablet) The odd thing is that Microsoft groks the post-PC idea, and they in fact sell a post-PC device: the Xbox. It's based on a PC, but Microsoft won't, for example, allow it to operate outside of the walled garden of (signed) Xbox games and Xbox Live content. You can't side load any app or game not approved by Microsoft, and you can't even surf the web, or use a mouse and keyboard. It's deliberately limited in purpose. It's not a PC.
Since you already stated your preference for having a general purpose operating system on a tablet, Microsoft has your needs covered.
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Originally Posted by GrangerFX
Even if you are a huge Apple fan (like I am) think for a moment about how much it would suck if there was no competing Android platform. Competition is a good thing no matter how you look at it (unless you are a monopoly). I think that if I were not an iOS developer that I would prefer Android for its hacking potential and app anarchy. If there is something to take away from this article it is that Apple has a very profitable mobile platform while Google and the rest of the Android world have a very low margin, highly fragmented market.
It is impressive to walk into the supermarket and see a fully functional pre-paid Android phone for less than $100. If you just want a decent MP3 player and the ability to load apps, that's a pretty nice device even if you never use it as a phone. I don't see Apple ever competing in that market. That is the kind of thing that competition brings. The vast majority of the world's population will never be able to afford an iPhone (not even a "low cost" iPhone).
I don't think about competition in terms of good or bad. I don't wish it away. Competition is an inevitable outcome of any free market with relatively low barriers to entry. Copying is inevitable. While I don't condone copying, it is inevitable, and companies should defend their IP lest their competitors walk all over them with impunity.
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Originally Posted by d4NjvRzf
It seems slightly ironic that the US is consuming media increasingly via apps when the iPhone was originally billed as a platform for HTML5 web apps (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vq993Td6ys)
Yes. As far as I can tell, the App Store and its popularity took Apple and Steve Jobs by surprise. But then Steve was also wrong about not wanting to make iPods and iTunes compatible with Windows.